Players' `Blue Leaves': great script, fine acting, excellent direction

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by Kelli Cousins

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I must admit, I was frightened for the Rice Players when they decided to put on House of Blue Leaves as the third play of the 1996-1997 season. Blue Leaves presents some very difficult casting and acting problems in that one actor must be able to play the piano, all actors must be able to switch almost instantaneously from giddy to somber emotions, and the cast is rather large.

Despite the difficulty of the material, the play is shown to its advantage through the direction of Adrian Crowne and the lovely performances of the actors themselves.

The quick (and difficult) emotional changes from slapstick humor to despair are performed seamlessly. The entire cast is strong, and they work off of each other well, both for laughs and dramatic punch.

The play is about Artie Shaughnessy (Troy Van Voorhis), an aspiring musician and unfaithful husband. Artie is in love with the most energetic woman in the world, Bunny Flingus (Jerusha Redford), but he is married to the aptly named Bananas (Heather Hawley). As Artie dreams of marrying Bunny and getting famous writing music for Hollywood movies, Artie's son, Ronnie (Martin Holt), dreams of blowing up the Pope, who has come to visit New York. Needless to say, comic hijinks ensue.

The plot is complicated by the arrival of three degenerate nuns (Dave Goetz, Todd Humphreys and Marla Smith) and a deaf starlet (Noelle Berryman) only to be resolved by a big-shot Hollywood director (Blake Commagere).

So far, the plot sounds much like a movie farce. Indeed, this play admirably utilizes the slapstick comedy and fast pace of films like What's Up, Doc? and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World . Like these films, the plot of Blue Leaves has to do with getting recognized publicly for one's accomplishments, or simply getting rich. Also like these films, the play is self-conscious of the audience. Monologues are delivered out to the viewers by every character, and the audience's reactions to things such as the opening songs of the play are taken to heart by the characters themselves.

However, this play has a lot more emotional pull than a simple farce does. Instead of presenting the crazy pace and insane characters as simply cute and harmless, the play works on frantic energy that the viewer knows will eventually collapse in on itself, and that the characters are not destined to achieve their dreams.

The actors play simultaneous comedy and tragedy admirably. Van Voorhis' Artie is solicitous of love and understanding from the audience without being pathetic. He blends Artie's selfishness wonderfully with Artie's more human qualities, making the character somehow likable. Redford's Bunny is energetic to say the least, as she screeches around the stage like a pink cannonball. Her energy pushes the play along, and her physical comedy with Van Voorhis is some of the best in the play.

Hawley's Bananas is amazing. Hawley has a very innocent look, with the hair over her eyes giving her a sheep-dog sort of quality. This innocence and sweetness plays well against Bananas' awareness of her husband's infidelity and her own depression. These three characters are the heart of the play, moving the first act along swiftly and with great emotional charge.

The second act introduces Artie and Bananas' son, Ronnie. Martin Holt's Ronnie is maniacal yet comic. He plays the part of the bumbling young saboteur well, exhibiting all the physical coordination of a lanky junior high school student as he repeatedly fumbles his hand grenade. We also catch the first glimpse of a celebrity in the second act with the entrance of Corrinna Stroller, played by Noelle Berryman. Berryman's Corrinna is very funny and likable. Three gender-confused nuns enter, demanding beer and coveting peanut butter. Goetz, Humphreys and Smith are amusing as the nuns, and they play their physical comedy well.

However, at this point the play starts to splinter. People enter and exit, tackle each other, get arrested and get dragged away by mental institution orderlies. The play has been building to these frantic moments, but the crazy plot twists and fast pace seem to have gotten away from even the performers and director. This part of the play should be a little confusing, but not incomprehensible, and the sensibility Crowne showed in having the actors clearly exhibit their motivations through most of the play goes away for a few minutes. The play at this point kind of explodes, sending characters and motivations splattering all over the stage randomly. Whereas this kind of explosion is important and interesting thematically in the play, I did not find it as effective as Crowne's more straightforward approach to the material in the play's first act. The momentum of the play itself drives the play, and not the characters.

This small misstep, though, is more than made up for in the next scene. For the finale of the play, Crowne and his actors go back to the emotional honesty coupled with comic caricature that served them so well in the first act. The play once again gets smaller -- there are five people at most on stage, as opposed to the last scene's record of nine. The scene opens with only two people on stage, Artie and his good friend Billy Einhorn, Corrinna's lover. Blake Commagere's Billy is slick and mesmerizing. He can be funny without saying a word, and his slimy charm is fascinating to watch. He also orchestrates the resolution of the play like any good movie director should. Billy ties up loose ends, negotiates living situations, and arranges matches, but not to a necessarily happy end.

The play kept me laughing almost all the way through. All the actors have a great sense of comic timing, and they use it. The underlying tragedy of the characters' lives is brought out gently and almost unwillingly, through the comedy and not against it.

Even in its broadest comic moments the play never seems false. The message of the play, which has to do with how well people know celebrities and how little people care to know each other, comes across all too clearly to the watchers, who now know Artie Shaughnessy and his family perhaps better than they know themselves.

This item appeared in the Arts & Entertainment section of the February 14, 1997 issue.

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